Category Archives: Aaaarghh!

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At my (previous) company we’re using Synology Cloud Station with 20 users and lots of files. One user was complaining that the folder names were renamed with this nice addition:

Company Name B.V._PC_Name_UserName_Jan-27-145750-2015_TailCharacterConflict

Everything I tried didn’t help: renaming the folder, deleting it from the server, resyncing, everything. Google wasn’t a big help either. The folder kept being renamed with this very irritating TailCharacterConflict.

Until I saw the pattern.

You CAN’T let you folder name end with a trailing PERIOD. In this case, the folder name was Company Name B.V.

Changing the folder name to Company Name BV (with the periods) solved the problem. Insane, but true!

Tried to install OpenElec and Ubuntu on a mini-ITX Sapphire White system and every time I tried to run the installer, I got a blank screen.
So I booted OpenElec (and Ubuntu) without the ‘quiet’ option from the kernel parameters and I was able to see this error:

My system is NOT a laptop so I don’t care about brightness. Searching for a solution on the internet got me nowhere; it involved recompiling kernels but that’s not very useful when I still need to install the Linux distribution.

But I found a solution! Forcing this entry into the kernel parameters while booting the installer:

acpi_backlight=vendor

… it solved my problems! So, OpenElec and Ubuntu are now installing without problems.

BUT, don’t forget to modify your installed distro to reflect the same parameter! If you use OpenElec, you’ll need to manually add the parameter when booting it, SSH into your box and remount the /flash mount as RW (mount -o remount,rw /flash), so you can edit the syslinux.cfg file and add the parameter.

After installing Windows 2008 R2 inside VMware, I changed the network driver from E1000 to VMNET3. No problem, Windows 2008 R2 recognized the new adapters after a reboot. I only had to change the DHCP IP address to fixed IP. And then the problems started: apparently Windows 2008 (or Windows 7) won’t let you change the network location as soon as it has put the network in the ‘Unidentified network’ category. Trying ‘to fix’ this problem using the Windows ‘Diagnose’ tool just removed the fixed IP address and put it back on DHCP (and strangely, now the network category is Public).

But in the end, this wasn’t it. Seems that LSI1068E based controllers disable all disk caching built into the drives by default.

If the server has battery backup you can enable basic drive caching on the Logical Volumes without risk (or, without a battery, WITH risk).

Goto www.LSI.com (The controller is made by LSI) and download and install MegaRAID Storage Manager. In short, install the VIB on your ESXi machine, the Manager on a Windows or Linux machine, sync their host names and enable all ports on the ESXi firewall for incoming TCP traffic.

Highlight the Virtual Raid Volume, right click, properties. Enable Cache and save. You have to do this on every logical raid volume.

I was stunned to find out that the search function on the Mail.app wasn’t working anymore since I’ve upgraded my Mac from Snow Leopard 10.6.8 to (the very cool) Lion 10.7. Thought it could be Spotlight not working, or something else.